Sunday in the Park with George | Guthrie Theater Sunday in the Park with George Sunday in the Park with George June 17 - August 20, 2017 on the Wurtele Thrust Stage Single tickets on sale Wed. 2/1/17 at 11 a.m. music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim book by James Lapine directed by Joseph Haj Stephen Sondheim’s artistic masterpiece Inspired by Georges Seurat’s famous painting, this dazzling musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, two of the greatest musical theater artists of our time, merges past and present into a poignant and sophisticated exploration of what it takes, and what it costs, to be an artist. George is an obsessive painter who risks it all, including his relationship with his lover Dot, to complete his latest masterpiece. A century later, George’s great-grandson is working as an artist in New York City. In search of inspiration, he soon discovers that the answer to his future is painted clearly in his past.

TICKET PRICES Sunday in the Park with George [Original Cast Recording] - Mandy Patinkin,Bernadette Peters | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic Sunday in the Park with George [Original Cast Recording] AllMusic Rating google+ AllMusic Review by Bruce Eder Stephen Sondheim's musical, inspired by the life and work of the French pointillist (or, as he preferred to be known, chromo-luminarist) painter Georges Seurat (1859-91), is one of his most beguiling and challenging works, but one that won't necessarily appeal to every taste. The music is, on one level, an homage to Seurat's most celebrated painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and could easily be the finest dramatization on a work of art and the life of an artist this side of Alexander Korda's film Rembrandt. But this is also a sweet, sad, profound, and ultimately elevating meditation on life and the creative process. Sunday In the Park With George moves with lightning swiftness between brittle passages, many centered on frustration, and soaring, achingly beautiful sections.

It engages in a fair amount of wry comedy in the process, mostly at the expense of its characters, and, more importantly, the worlds of modern art, multi-media art, and New Age music, among other '80s cultural fixtures. Clearly we're not talking about Gypsy or A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum here, in terms of entertainment (though there are a few broad moments for the ensemble, which includes Charles Kimbrough and Brent Spiner ), but Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters turn in brilliant performances together on "Color and Light," "We Do Not Belong Together," "Move On," "Children and Art"; the entire ensemble excels in "Sunday," and his work on "Finishing the Hat" is worth the price of the CD by itself. The sound is clean, although the quiet passages could have been mastered at a slightly higher volume level. (Note: Along with Into the Woods , Sunday In the Park With George is one of a pair of Sondheim musicals that exist in complete form as commercial video releases featuring their original casts). Track Listing Project MUSE - Sunday in the Park with George (review) Brett D. Johnson Sunday in the Park with George.

Book by James Lapine. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Directed by Sam Buntrock. Roundabout Theatre Company, Studio 54, New York City. 27 March 2008. Stephen Sondheim’s Pulitzer Prize–winning musical Sunday in the Park with George was inspired by the life and work of French neo-impressionist painter Georges Seurat, particularly his masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. With this painting Seurat perfected a technique known as pointillism, or divisionism, a mathematical process of creation in which the artist applies small dots of color to a canvas that are blended by the viewer’s eye rather than on the artist’s palette. In so doing, Seurat created a new language of art based on perception. From their own observations and imaginings, Sondheim and librettist James Lapine crafted a postmodern meditation on the artistic process. Sunday premiered at Playwrights Horizons in July 1983, underwent considerable revision and extension, and debuted at the Booth Theatre on 2 May 1984.

Since then, Sondheim’s paean to the artistic process has become inextricably linked to its original production, in part because of its cast recording and video of the live performance, both of which feature original stars Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. In November 2005, British director Sam Buntrock re-imagined Sunday for a new generation. His muchlauded revival began its life at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, before transferring to the West End’s Wyndam Theatre, where it garnered five Olivier Awards. The production was transplanted to Broadway in January 2008, earning nine Tony Award nominations. Buntrock’s revival, which received much critical attention due to its use of cutting-edge special effects, heightened the postmodern aesthetics of Sunday by utilizing technology as an “extension of man,” foregrounding the fragmented nature of perception, and emphasizing the tension between critical distance and emotional investment. David Farley’s innovative set design functioned, in the words of Marshall McLuhan, as an “extension of man.” Farley situated the action in an artist’s studio, which he transformed via animated projections and further augmented with solitary pieces of furniture.

In act 1, elements of “La Grande Jatte” appeared on the white walls of the studio at the stroke of George’s hand. Sketches emerged and were altered, color was added, and Seurat’s pointillist classic came together, piece by piece. By showing this progression, director and designer invited the audience to enter the mind of the artist, to experience the world as perceived by Seurat. Rather than upstage the actors, Buntrock’s conflation of live and mediatized performance enhanced the intimacy of the production by creating an imaginative canvas for the musical’s two Georges. Click for larger view View full resolution Roundabout Theatre Company’s Sunday in the Park with George. Pictured (left to right): Alison Horowitz, Jessica Molaskey, Drew McVety, Brynn O’Malley, Jessica Grové, Daniel Evans (Seurat), Michael Cumpsty, and Jenna Russell (Dot). Photo: Joan Marcus. Farley employed animated technology for similar purposes in act 2. He transformed the modern-day George’s “Chromolume” into a multimedia light show. Dots of color enveloped the stage, spilled into the auditorium, and slowly coalesced into Seurat’s painting.

As in the original production, a blown fuse thwarts George’s first effort. Farley’s design, therefore, served as a visual representation of how George, like his ancestral namesake, attempts to “get through to something new,” but often is frustrated by outside forces, including temperamental wiring and critics. In the extended musical sequence titled “Putting it Together,” Farley created animated projections of George to visualize the ways in which the artist not only extends, but also fragments, himself “bit by bit” in an attempt to entertain his legion of financial backers. The clones of George smiled, nodded, and drank champagne. Buntrock employed a plethora of framing devices in order to foreground the fragmented nature of perception inherent in Sunday’s libretto. His staging, in concert with the lighting, isolated the inhabitants of “La Grande Jatte” and formed a series of individual portraits. The spatial detachment of the characters served as a visual representation of their incongruous perspectives, ranging from Seurat’s fellow painter Jules (Michael Cumpsty), who condemns Seurat’s scientific approach to art, to the sardonic one-eyed Boatman (Alexander Gemignani), who asserts that his impaired vision affords him a clearer vision of the truth.

Thus, Buntrock seemed to suggest that Seurat’s painting, in which no character is looking [End Page 638] at another, should not be viewed as a grand narrative, but as a collage-like representation of divergent perspectives. Buntrock utilized yet another framing device in “Putting it Together”: he employed a photographer to distinguish between the external and internal realities of George. The flashbulb of the camera disrupted the action, immobilizing the party goers in a tableau. George then expressed his inner turmoil through musical soliloquy, before reanimating the crowd. Like his first-act predecessor, the modern-day George manipulated the various frames, selecting what the audience saw. The performances of Daniel Evans (George) and Jenna Russell (Dot/Marie) conveyed the postmodern tension between critical distance and emotional investment that pervaded Buntrock’s production. Evans’s restrained portrayal of Seurat—a counter to Patinkin’s bravura performance in the original production—suggested an alienated artist whose sole method of associating with others was by reimagining them in his painting.

Evans’s twentieth-century George was struck from a similar mold—a self-conscious sculptor whose artistic expression was contingent upon devising new methods to finance his inventions. Both Georges, as conceived by Evans, struggled to connect the dots in order to transmute incongruent concepts into sensations. Similarly, Russell infused Seurat’s mistress, Dot, with an innate wisdom that intensified the pathos of her unrequited love. Russell’s second-act portrayal of Marie, the octogenarian daughter of Dot and the grandmother of George, balanced George’s cerebral deliberations with an earnest meditation on the beauties of “Children and Art.” By negotiating the terrain between critical detachment and emotional involvement, Evans and Russell underscored the ambiguities of Sondheim’s work and captured the self-conscious yet affecting tone of Buntrock’s production. Brett D.

Johnson Sunday in the Park with George | WaterTower Theatre Sunday in the Park with George July 28 - August 20, 2017 Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim Book by James Lapine Directed by Terry Martin Musical Directed by Jeff Lankov Sponsored, in part, by Women of WaterTower Theatre (WOW!), Liberty Capital Bank, Rainmaker Advertising, Pinnacle and Million Air Dallas Inspired by the painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” by French Impressionist Georges Seurat, Sunday in the Park with George, the dazzling musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, two of the greatest musical theatre artists of our time, brings art to vibrant life. George is an obsessive painter who risks it all, including his relationship with his lover Dot, to complete his latest masterpiece. A century later, George’s great-grandson is working as an artist in New York City. In search of inspiration, he soon discovers that the answer to his future is painted clearly in his past. Sunday in the Park With George the Musical Studio 54 - Opened 21 Feb 2008, closed 29 Jun 2008 What was your favourite production?

Add your thoughts in the comments box Synopsis In 1884 Paris, George Seurat is making sketches to prepare for his famous painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” His partner, Dot, is modeling for him despite her frustrations. The scene shifts to an art gallery where Georges’ artist friend Jules and his wife Yvonne remark that his work has “No Life.” Back at Georges’ studio, Dot is eagerly preparing for their trip to the Follies, but once again Georges chooses his painting over Dot and they do not go. Back on the island, Dot turns up with a new beau Louis, which prompts two girls, both named Celeste, to “Gossip” about them. The girls set their sights on a pair of sailors who have arrived. Jules berates Georges for what he views is his poor artistic skills. Dot laments losing Georges, but decides that being with Louis was the right choice (“Everybody Loves Louis”). The Celestes fight over the soldiers, with each of them wanting “The One on the Left.” As everyone leaves the island, Georges is sad to have lost Dot, but realizes that art will always take precedence for him (“Finishing the Hat”).

Dot arrives at his studio to reveal she is carrying his child but will soon be moving to America with Louis. Yvonne and Jules arrive to convince Georges to give up his unconventional method of painting, but he refuses. After they leave, Dot and Georges finally agree they will never work as a couple (“We Do Not Belong Together”). At the park again, all of Georges’ subjects are squabbling before he finally asserts his control and paints the simple harmonious scene he wants as the characters form their famous tableau (“Sunday”). The subjects in the painting remark on how they dislike being stuck in the same spot (“It’s Hot Up Here”), before revealing their sadness at Georges’s premature death at the age of 31. In 1984 New York City, Georges and Dot’s great-grandson George is also an artist and reveals his latest creation, “Chromolume #7” which was inspired by Georges’ famous painting. George’s grandmother (Georges and Dot’s daughter) Marie arrives to help with his presentation. The art critics are very impressed with the work, but George still finds it difficult to maintain a career in art (“Putting It Together”). Marie reflects on her pride at the family’s legacy (“Children and Art”).

A few weeks later, Marie has died, and George has arrived in Paris to present his work on the island that inspired Georges’ painting. He reads from a book Dot passed down to Marie and reflects on his similarities to his ancestor. A vision of Dot appears and encourages George to continue to pursue art (“Move On”). The characters from the painting resume their positions in the tableau (“Sunday”) before disappearing, leaving only a blank canvas with unlimited possibilities.

Songs “Sunday in the Park with George” – Georges & Dot “No Life” – Jules, Yvonne “Color and Light” – Dot, Georges “Gossip” – Celeste #1, Celeste #2, Boatman, Nurse, Old Lady, Jules, Yvonne “The Day Off” – Company “The One on the Left” – Soldier, Celeste #1, Celeste #2, Georges “Finishing the Hat” – Georges “We Do Not Belong Together” – Dot, Georges “Beautiful” – Old Lady, Georges “It’s Hot Up Here” – Company “Chromolume #7″ – Orchestra Supersizing a 'Sunday in the Park' - The New York Times The New York Times Arts |Supersizing a 'Sunday in the Park' Search Supersizing a 'Sunday in the Park' By JAN BENZEL Continue reading the main story Photo From left, Michael Starobin, James Lapine, Stephen Sondheim and David Charles Abell with the cast of ‘‘Sunday in the Park With George’’ at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.

Credit Marie-Noëlle Robert/Théâtre du Châtelet PARIS — What happens when you take a Stephen Sondheim chamber piece — “Sunday in the Park With George” — and produce it operatically, quadrupling the size of the orchestra? Mr. Sondheim, unmistakable with his thatch of silver hair and beard, was there to see the result at a final dress rehearsal last weekend. Front row, aisle seat, in the mezzanine of the 2,000-seat Théâtre du Châtelet, with James Lapine , his longtime collaborator, a few seats away. Their two-act 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical inspired by Georges Seurat ’s pointillist masterpiece, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” is being performed in a short run; 10 shows, the last on April 25.

The production, thanks in part to the arts budget of the city of Paris, is a more-is-more extravaganza, with elaborate sets, a light show, special effects and, most remarkably, a 46-member orchestra — and a new orchestration by Michael Starobin, who had done the original orchestration nearly 30 years ago, for a pit that had a mere 11 players. Before the performance on Saturday Mr. Sondheim talked a bit about why he and Mr. Lapine turned to Seurat to explore what he called “the old conflict between art and life.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story “One of the things that was good about choosing that painting,” he said, “was that Seurat the painter was a very quiet and recessive and non-spotlight man, so very little is known about him or his life. And he died very young, he died at 31 — so we could make up anything we wanted. “If you’re going to deal with an artist like Van Gogh you’re dealing with a myth. Already people know something about his life, and you’d have to have a painter who cuts his ear off or else it wouldn’t seem authentic.

But you can write almost anything — Seurat himself is a blank canvas.” So his Georges (played by the velvet-voiced Julian Ovenden, who joins the cast of “Downton Abbey” next season) is “a man who is obsessed with what he’s doing and at the same time trying to maintain the relationship with his lady.” The second act takes place 100 years after the first and deals with Georges’s fictional great-grandson, a conceptual artist in Chicago — where the painting hangs at the Art Institute— and his problems in his life with art and life. “Now in real life, Seurat had a son who died very, very, very young, so it’s all our fantasy,” Mr. Sondheim said, “but we wanted to use that painting for a story about an artist and his landscape.” Mr. Sondheim, who is 83, has a following in France. He was speeding from one interview to another (Radio France is devoting its programming on April 25 to Sondheim and will broadcast a live performance of the show at 8 p.m.).

This is the third of his musicals at Châtelet (the fourth if you include “West Side Story,” for which he wrote the lyrics). According to Jean-Luc Choplin, the head of Châtelet, the American musical theater is an exotic, unfamiliar, even experimental-seeming art form to many in France. In the past decade there has been more of it to see at Châtelet, and on a grand scale and in an august setting. The theater, which opened in 1862, was the locus for concerts by Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Richard Strauss, Debussy and Mahler. It is owned by the city of Paris and supported in part with public funds. Some of the American musicals Châtelet has put on have been crowd-pleasers, with multiple numbers you can hum on the way out — “The Sound of Music,” “Oklahoma!,” “West Side Story,” “My Fair Lady.” Parisians seem to have taken to the sharper-edged, more musically complicated and even dissonant Sondheim, and have come back for more; the first French-language biography of Mr.

Sondheim has just been published, written by Renaud Machart, a columnist and former music critic of Le Monde. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Choplin has played a part in the embrace of Sondheim in France. He began what he now calls his “Sondheim cycle” (next up, in 2013-14: “Into the Woods”) when he was pursuing programming that had to do with the movies — he used to work at Disney in Los Angeles — and decided to put on “A Little Night Music,” based on Ingmar Bergman’s “Smiles of a Summer Night.” Like “Sunday in the Park” it was a show that began in New York as a chamber piece. With the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra at his behest, Mr. Choplin aimed to experiment with expanding Sondheim, in the case of “Sunday,” “to see if this painting, larger than life, will also become a music theater piece larger than life, almost an opera,” he said.

“The idea is not to be conservative.” Photo Sophie-Louise Dann, who portrays Dot/Marie, and Julian Ovenden, playing the painter Georges Seurat, in ‘‘Sunday in the Park With George’’ in Paris. Credit Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters And so Mr. Starobin went to work. “The challenge,” he said, “was to stay true to the nature of what we had done with a chamber ensemble, of capturing the pointillism with Steve’s use of minimalist techniques, capturing the French sound that gets used in the first act, and the pop sound that occurs in the second act, but now having a much larger palette and a much larger sound. One has to be careful with that because it’s still the same lyrics that need to be heard.” “Sunday in the Park” opened on Broadway in 1984 with an ensemble, which, Mr. Starobin recalled, sitting in a practice room at Châtelet, didn’t even include a bass. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to.

Sign Up Privacy Policy “We had to play the bass on what was a fairly new instrument for the theater at the time, the synthesizer,” he said. Some other Sondheim works, like “Sweeney Todd,” have been more orchestral, he said, but “Sunday in the Park” was so much a chamber piece of music you couldn’t just put lots of instruments playing what had already been written; it had to be reconceived for orchestral forces. One of the moments enhanced in the new orchestration is the first-act finale, where Georges moves the characters into their positions, finishing the painting. The figures turn their heads just so, all looking at something, but no one looking at anyone else. “Stephen wrote this wonderful number that ends in a blaze of color, which was very hard to accomplish with 11 pieces,” Mr. Starobin recalled. He had his two violinists put down their violins and pick up bells, the cymbal and chimes to bring the moment over the top with percussion. In the new version his orchestra swells during that passage; it sounds big, as if every instrument plays a part.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story “It’s almost too easy in a sense,” he said with a laugh. “It was almost more satisfying to hear the 11 pieces do it because for them to jump up a level was more theatrical.” “Finishing the Hat” remains fairly spare: staccato punctuation for Georges’s meditation on painting. It’s the song that provided titles of both of Mr. Sondheim’s memoirs, “Finishing the Hat” and “Look, I Made a Hat.” “The song is about the process of artistic creation,” Mr. Sondheim said. “It’s the process of the imagination taking one over and blotting the world out, when you trance out while you’re writing something or painting something or composing something. “It’s what happens when the world disappears.” And while Châtelet’s audience is largely French, the musicals are all performed in English, with French surtitles. Mr. Sondheim reported a surtitle-related brainstorm by Mr.

Lapine for “Sunday in the Park.” He suggested that since the first act takes place in Paris, and the second act takes place in Chicago, “It seemed like it’d be a really good idea to have the first act in French with English surtitles and the second act in English with French surtitles.” It didn’t happen. “When you get into the practicalities of that,” Mr. Sondheim said, “it becomes virtually impossible because you’d have to have a cast that is fluent in both languages. It isn’t like an opera where you can just sing a foreign language, there’s a good deal of dialogue so people have to sound like they can speak the language.” The lines are as faithful and poetic as the translators can make them, said Mr. Choplin, but of course nuance is lost in the translation. Quoting Alan Jay Lerner, he added, translation is nearly impossible because “it takes 30 percent more words to say anything in French.” Opening night, Monday, did not go off without a glitch or two. The swelling orchestra occasionally drowned out the singers, vestiges of the light show from the Chicago scene flashed through the finale. But all that was eclipsed by the curtain call. There was the cast.

There was the conductor, David Charles Abell. And there, to thunderous applause, came Mr. Sondheim, with Mr. Lapine and Mr. Starobin. More, in this case, was definitely more. Stefania Rousselle contributed reporting. A version of this article appears in print on April 18, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Sunday in the Park with George (Libretto) Sunday in the Park with George (Libretto) 6m, 8f ISBN: 9781557830685 This 1995 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical was inspired by the painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. More Information Below: Samuel French does not license performance rights to this show. For licensing information please click Request License below: Drama TAGS Samuel French does not license performance rights to this show. For licensing information please click Request License button. This 1995 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical was inspired by the painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat.

A complex work revolving around a fictionalized Seurat immersed in single-minded concentration while painting the masterpiece, the production has evolved into a meditation on art, emotional connection, and community. This publication contains the entire script of the musical. " Sunday is itself a modernist creation, perhaps the first truly modernist work of musical theatre that Broadway has produced ... a watershed event that demands nothing less than a retrospective, even revisionist, look at the development of the serious Broadway musical." Frank Rich, The New York Times Magazine For more information, please click HERE . "In SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, […] the songwriter Stephen Sondheim and the playwright-director James Lapine demand that an audience radically change its whole way of looking at the Broadway musical. […] Mr. Sondheim and Mr. Lapine have created an audacious, haunting and, in its own intensely personal way, touching work. […] Stand back and you'll see that this evening's two theater artists, Mr. Sondheim and Mr.

Lapine, have woven all those imaginative possibilities into a finished picture with a startling new glow." - The New York Times "No other musical points out more succinctly the perils of not living in the moment; no piece better conveys not just the struggles of creativity but the doubts and humiliations; no show has such a profound understanding of what it's like to live around someone with the toxic mix of workaholism and self-doubt." - The Chicago Tribune "The show effortlessly combines the general with the particular; this semi-fictionalised Seurat embodies the ungovernable obsessiveness of the true artist." - The Guardian "Sondheim and bookwriter James Lapine aren't interested in romantic generalisations. Their breathtakingly original treatment of the idea makes trenchant universal observations by cleaving to the dramatically particular. […] A show about art is flirting with danger. In this pin-sharp production, Sondheim proves that those who dare can, indeed, win." - The Independent SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on July 6, 1983.

Starring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, only the first act was performed for the vast majority of the run. As the shows progressed, the first act continued to be worked on, and the second act premiered with the last three performances of the 25 total. The musical then transferred to the Booth Theatre on Broadway on May 2, 1984. It starred Patinkin and Peters once again and was directed by book writer James Lapine. The show ultimately ran until October 13, 1985 after 604 performances. The London premiere of the musical was on March 15, 1990 at the Royal National Theatre. On May 15, 1994, the original cast reunited on Broadway for a tenth anniversary concert/benefit performance for the charity "Friends in Deed." Characters CASTING 6m, 8f A BOATMAN A surly blue-collared laborer, simple-minded and slovenly. Optional Doubling as CHARLES REDMOND. Male, 35-60 yrs old Range: Eb2 - Eb4 A SOLDIER A French military man, polite and gentlemanly.

Close with his companion, though he yearns for a separation. Optional Doubling as ALEX. Male, 20-35 yrs old Range: A2 - F4 CELESTE #1 A young shop girl, gossipy and flirtatious. Her friendship with the other Celeste is strained when they fight over the Soldier and his companion. Optional Doubling as A WAITRESS. Female, 18-30 yrs old Range: B3 - G5 CELESTE #2 Another young shop girl, gossipy and flirtatious. Her friendship with the other Celeste is strained when they fight over the Soldier and his companion. Optional Doubling as ELAINE. Female, 18-30 yrs old Range: A3 - G5 DOT/MARIE As Dot, George's headstrong mistress and occasional model so discontent with their relationship that she eventually leaves him. As Marie, George's elderly wheelchair-bound grandmother who helps him connect to his artistry through her grammar book notes. Female, 20-40 yrs old Range: E3 - D5 FRANZ Jules's German coachman and Freida's husband. Disgruntled with his job.

Has a bit of a temper and secretly yearns for the Nurse. Optional Doubling as DENNIS. Male, 30-50 yrs old Range: B2 - G4 FRIEDA Jules and Yvonne's cook and Franz's wife. Caring and positive as a surrogate nanny to Louise. Forced by Jules into an affair. Optional Doublings include BETTY and YOUNG MAN. Female, 35-55 yrs old Range: G3 - F5 GEORGE In Act 1: George Seurat, a rather cold artist obsessed with his work at the cost of his personal life. Constantly troubled and borderline obsessive. Act 2: Seurat's burnt-out descendant and inventor-sculpture searching for his purpose. In the end, he is able to use his connection to the past to find the meaning in a blank canvas. Male, 25-40 yrs old Range: G#2 - Ab4 JULES A rival artist. Callous, critical, and ultimately shallow. He forces Frieda to engage in extramarital affairs. Optional Doubling as BOB GREENBERG.

Male, 25-45 yrs old Range: G2 - F4 LOUIS A baker who Dot starts seeing to make George jealous. Kind, friendly, and very popular, but a bit dull. Optional Doublings include BILLY WEBSTER and MAN. Male, 35-55 yrs old Range: B2 - A4 LOUISE Jules and Yvonne's spoiled little girl. She faces neglect and abuse from her parents, despite being honest. Optional Doubling as BOY. Female, 8-12 yrs old Range: G3 - Eb5 NURSE The Old Lady's attendant. She is calming and assertive. Optional Doublings include HARRIET PAWLING and MRS. Female, 40-60 yrs old Range: G3 - F4 OLD LADY George's mother. A cranky and rather demanding fixture in the park. She is able to find solace in nostalgia, and inspires George to find order in his art. Optional Doubling as BLAIR DANIELS. Female, 60-80 yrs old Range: F#3 - Eb5 YVONNE Jules' pampered wife.

She is as snippy and snooty as her husband. Optional Doubling as NAOMI EISEN. Female, 25-35 yrs old Range: E3 - Eb5 Author(s) Sunday in the Park with George | IU Theatre IU Theatre 2013: Sunday in the Park with George Sunday in the Park with George Book by James Lapine Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim Directed and choreographed by George Pinney Musical direction by Terry LaBolt April 12, 13, 16-19, 2013 @ 7:30 p.m. April 20 @ 2:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Ruth N. Halls Theatre Synopsis Sunday in the Park with George changed the very landscape of musical theatre. Inspired by Georges Seurat’s famous painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Sondheim and Levine’s musical depicts the inspiring journey, the joy, and the heartbreak of an artist committed to realizing his vision. Sunday in the Park is a daringly theatrical portrayal of human creativity through the lens of one particular work of art.

“My favorite musical of all time.” Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, 11/30/2011 Thursday, April 11, at 5:30 p.m. in the Studio Theatre. Theatre Circle and the Department of Theatre and Drama present Michelle Facos, History of Art Professor Faco will discuss French painter Georges Seurat (1859–1891), his art, his world, and his most famous painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - all in relation to our production of the Tony Award-winning musical, Sunday in the Park with George. Professor Facos is the author of many articles and books, including the recent Introduction to Nineteenth Century Art (Routledge 2011) . Join us as Michelle Facos "connects the dots" between a major painter, his masterpiece, and one of the smartest and entertaining musicals of the twentieth century. Tuesday, April 16, after the performance of Sunday in the Park with George, please join us for a talk back with director George Pinney, members of the creative team and the cast to learn more about bringing this production to the stage.

Cast Stephen Sondheim | The Stars | Broadway: The American Musical | PBS Composers, Lyricists & Writers Stephen Sondheim Active in major Broadway productions of American musical theater beginning in 1957, composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim (born 1930) redefined the Broadway musical form with his innovative and award winning productions. He continued to be a major force in the shaping of this genre into the 1980s. American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim is mainly known for his stage works, which include “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (1962); “Anyone Can Whistle” (1964); “Company” (1970); “Follies” (1971); and “A Little Night Music” (1973). He is known for his collaborations with Leonard Bernstein as lyricist for “West Side Story” (1957) and “Candide” (1974), and with Richard Rogers on “Do I Hear a Waltz” (1965).

Sondheim’s partnership with the director/producer Hal Prince resulted in Tony Awards for Best Musical Scores for three consecutive years (1971-1973), and “Pacific Overtures” (1976) was hailed as a landmark in American musical theater because of its masterful use of traditional Japanese theater elements. In 1984, Sondheim paired himself with James Lapine to put together “Sunday in the Park with George,” a musical inspired by a Georges Seurat painting. Sondheim was born into a prosperous business family on March 22, 1930. He studied piano for two years while very young and continued his interest in the musical stage throughout his education. Sondheim’s parents divorced in 1942 and his mother took up residence in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, close to the summertime residence of Oscar Hammerstein II. As a friend of Hammerstein’s son, Sondheim was able to ask the famous librettist for an evaluation of his first stage work, a high school production produced at the age of 15. Hammerstein’s critical evaluation of “By George” initiated a four-year relationship that was decisive in formulating the young artist’s style.

As Hammerstein’s personal assistant, Sondheim gained entry into the world of professional theater. While attending Williams College he performed duties in the preparation and rehearsals of the Rogers and Hammerstein productions of “South Pacific” and “The King and I.” Upon graduation he won the Hutchinson Prize, which enabled him to study composition at Princeton University with Milton Babbitt. Sondheim began his professional career in television by writing scripts for the TOPPER and THE LAST WORD series and incidental music for the Broadway musical “Girls of Summer.” Shortly thereafter he made the acquaintance of Arthur Laurents, who introduced him to Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein as the possible lyricist for “West Side Story,” which was produced in 1957. The young songwriter found himself involved in one of the most successful shows ever produced on Broadway. Sondheim followed this success by collaborating on the Broadway production of “Gypsy” in 1959, distinguishing himself as one of the great young talents in American musical theater. Intent on broadening his talents, Sondheim sought productions where he could use his musical as well as lyrical expertise.

He produced “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” in 1962 … a bawdy farce based on the plays of Plautus. The show had an impressive run of almost 1,000 performances, won the Tony Award for Best Musical, and was made into a successful film in 1966. A scene from Sondheim's "A Little Night Music." Sondheim followed with two less successful ventures: “Anyone Can Whistle” (1964) and “Do I Hear a Waltz” (1965). Although both failed commercially, Sondheim contributed songs of high quality. In 1970 Sondheim produced “Company,” which once again won him unanimous praise from the critics. The production was awarded the Drama Critics and Tony Awards for Best Musical of the season, and Sondheim received awards for the best composer and best lyricist. One critic commented that “Company” “is absolutely first rate … the freshest … in years … This is a wonderful musical score, the one that Broadway has long needed.

…” The following year Sondheim produced “Follies,” a retrospective of the “Ziegfield Follies,” in which the composer blended the nostalgia of popular songs of the past with his own style of sentimental ballad. He was awarded both the Drama Critics and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Musical of 1971. In “A Little Night Music” (1973) Sondheim exposed his strong background in classical music. It was described by critics as reminiscent of Mahler, Strauss, Ravel, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff. Another Tony Award winner, “A Little Night Music” also included his first commercial hit song, “Send in the Clowns.” Noteworthy as a relentless innovator, Sondheim collaborated with Hal Prince on “Pacific Overtures” (1976). In an attempt to relate the westernization of Japan with the commercialized present, Sondheim fused the unlikely elements of Haiku poetry, Japanese pentatonic scales, and Kabuki theater with contemporary stage techniques in a production that was hailed as a successful Broadway hit.

He followed this with “Sweeney Todd” (1979), the melodramatic story of the demon barber of Fleet Street who conspired with the neighborhood baker to supply her with sufficient barbershop victims for her meat pies. Less funny than tragic, “Sweeney Todd” explored the dark side of the 19th-century English social system. Sondheim’s talent derived from his ability to cross genres of music and theater to offer Broadway audiences works of remarkable craft on unexpected subjects that challenged and tested the form of the American musical. Sondheim explored issues of contemporary life; marriage and relationships in “Company”; madness and the human condition in “Anyone Can Whistle”; nostalgia and sentiment in “Follies”; Western imperialism in “Pacific Overtures”; and injustice and revenge in “Sweeney Todd.” Stephen Sondheim "A Funny Thing Happended on the Way to the Forum" "Gypsy" "Sunday in the Park with George" "Sweeney Todd" Jerome Robbins Jule Styne Sondheim avoided filler in his lyrics and concentrated on direct impact through verbal interplay. His lyrics were witty without his ever sacrificing integrity for superficially clever rhyme.

Similarly, he maintained his musical individuality even while operating in the adopted Eastern musical style of “Pacific Overtures.” Sondheim’s consistent ability to merge words and music that hint at the deeper personality beneath the prototype character distinguished him as a composer of rare ingenuity and talent. “Side by Side by Sondheim,” a musical tribute to the artist, was successfully produced in 1976. Sondheim’s later works included the film score for REDS (1981) and “Sunday in the Park with George” (1984), which won a 1985 Pulitzer Prize. “Into the Woods” was another musical hit on Broadway in 1987. Sondheim participated on the council of the Dramatists Guild and served as its president from 1973 to 1981. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1983. He won the 1990 Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)” from the movie DICK TRACY. Sondheim composed the music for the ABC television presentation TIME WARNER PRESENTS THE EARTH DAY SPECIAL (1990).

In 1992, he declined a National Medal of Arts Award, from the National Endowment for the Arts. On July 4, 2000, Sondheim was given the Praemium Imperiale award by the Japan Art Association. He was honored for his work in film and theater. Source: Excerpted from ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD BIOGRAPHY, 2ND ED. 17 VOLS., Gale Research, © 1998 Gale Research. Reprinted by permission of The Gale Group. Photo credits: Photofest and Martha Swope

Question: The Stephen Sondheim musical 'Sunday In The Park With George' was inspired by a painting by which French artist?
Answer: GEORGES SEURAT